Three Things I Learned from Aabria Iyengar

Aabria Iyengar is a RPG powerhouse, She's DMed 3 of the biggest D&D actual plays (Critical Role, Dimension 20, and The Adventure Zone) in one summer, and DMed and played in tons of other actual plays from NY by Night to Into the Motherlands.  Regardless of her role, Aabria brings a gravitas, goofiness, and amazing capacity for building dramatic scenes. She is someone who is at the top of the heap in regards to Roleplaying Games, so trying to emulate her is tempting.  However, in emulation lies the ways of madness.  Still, great Game Masters and roleplayers have lessons to teach, and here are the ones Aabria has taught me.

Warning, there may be small spoilers for Exandria Unlimited, Dimension 20: Misfits & Magic, and The Zone of Adventure: Imbalance

#1: Be a Stan of Your Players

    No other GM I've watched has openly fangirled (or fanboyed) as hard over their player characters during a game session as hard as Aabria. Watching her eyes light up, hands going to her face as her players make amazing or amazingly stupid decisions is infectious, and you can see the players at her table grow bolder as she encourages their antics.  Too often, GMs end up in an adversarial role, and that can stifle creativity and dampen fun.  

    I first became consciously aware of this watching Aabria running the original Critical Role: Exandria Unlimited.  With a fantastic cast, I found myself cheering and laughing frequently, and noticed that Aabria was as well, but not in the way GMs usually do.  Hers was a fan reaction; she was watching her favorite show with ringside seats.  She communicated fervent excitement over what they were going to do next, and her players thrived in that environment.

    Since then, I've become more verbally excited about my players' actions, and I've noticed a shift in bold decision making.  I've always been lucky with having good groups who go outside the box, but I've noticed them having more fun with it since then.  They love talking about their decisions, and leading the group in excitedly squealing about cool moments in post game wrap ups is a good time for all. 

#2: Involve The Players Even If They Aren't There

    This isn't a skill used all the time, but one that Aabria demonstrated during Exandria Unlimited.  There is a pageant scene when the party is in one of the characters' home towns.  Several members of the party decide to compete in the pageant, but when the other players decline, Aabria informed them that there were cards with NPC contestants at their tables, and while some characters weren't going to participate in the pageant, all the players would be.  This led to one of the funniest and most memorable roleplaying scenes of the campaign (for me at least).

    The concept of handing over NPCs to players like this was mind blowing for me.  In the past I've handed off NPC character sheets during combat, but I'd never completely given over the reigns on a whole NPC.  The note cards in EXU only had names and the players filled in personalities, but since then, I've handed off a few NPCs on notecards with names, a few personality traits, and even some sample stats or dice pools.

    My biggest stretch of this concept (and one I've permanently added to my GM toolbox) was during the first ever session I ran of the new Hunter: the Reckoning game I handed each player a NPC and had them play a doomed hunter cell having the opening interlude first brush with the monster the player characters would be hunting later on.  I told them they would all die during this scene and to play without brakes.  It let the players learn the systems like dice rolling and Desperation pools, operated within the horror genre of someone not involved in the rest of the movie dying in the first scene, and gave them a hint of what was to come. 

#3: Give Them Exactly What They Want 
(Even If They Don't Know What That Is)

    Aabria is a super fan of her players' characters in a fangirlish way, and it is intensely obvious that she is there to write simply THE BEST fanfiction for them.  From giving the players wands in Dimension 20: Misfits & Magic to letting Justin McElroy loose to play a radically different (and yet exactly the same) Taako in The Zone of Adventure: Imbalance to handing out an actual factual Vestige of Divergence in Exandria Unlimited, Aabria gives her players cool stuff and lets them revel with it. 

    This isn't unique to Aabria's GM style, but it is something she seems to go out of the way to do, and making a special effort towards giving the players' or their characters cool stuff adds an almost Christmas Eve level of excitement when players can sense it coming.

    She also isn't opposed to indulgent moments with characters.  Justin McElroy chewed scenery with Taako already in The Adventure Zone, but in The Zone of Adventure: Imbalance, it was obvious he was having a great time.  Giving Amy Carerro's character Opal an entire sequence with her past in the pageant scene in her home town in Exandria Unlimited was a highlight of the series, even though it had very little to do with the plot of the story.  Dimension 20: Misfits & Magic was full of fanfiction-esque indulgence in character relationships, moments, and scenes.  Most players are playing RPGs for fun, and letting them revel in their characters adds a wonderful dimension to the story and builds investment and immersion.

    In my Hunter: the Reckoning chronicle, one of my player's character, Amara, used to date the vampire they're hunting down, and they raided the vampire's haven.  The player had Amara steal a t-shirt, bedding, and a journal.  Later in the session, she retired to a room, reading the journal, putting on the shirt and lying on the bedding so that she could smell him, because she still missed him.  While the journal added some additional info to the hunt, the scene was mostly there for character growth, and it has been a pivotal moment for that character going forward.